


Half-Dark

by Meatball42



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Autumn, Canonical Character Death, Cemetery, Communication, Dark, Dawn - Freeform, Family, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Holidays, Moon, Nighttime, Peace, Pining, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Samhain, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2020-12-16 13:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21037082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: Everything was dying, she thought. And everything was living.The veil grew thinner as the moon rose.





	Half-Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).

She planned it out months in advance. Samhain was going to fall on a Wednesday, so Wanda made a habit of visiting Pietro’s grave every Wednesday night. When autumn came, no one would be suspicious.

The plan itself changed. Some days, Wanda wrote sweet letters to her brother. She told him all about the amazing things she saw with the Avengers: the children she saved, the towns that weren't destroyed because of her. She wrote about the friends she was making on the team, the new music and foods and TV shows. She wrote a ritual to summon a soulmate from beyond the grave for a happy visit, a welcome visit.

Other days, the days when her magic curdled inside of her like old milk, her plans were different. She collected mushrooms in the woods on her walks and prepared them for sacrifice. She found smooth stones and squeezed them until she bruised her own palms, concentrating on the people who she watched kill and destroy, the ones who got away. The rituals she wrote on those days were to absorb strength from the dead, to curse her enemies, to summon armies from beyond the veil.

She wondered what kind of day it would be, the Wednesday of Samhain.

It was a half-moon day. Nature balanced on the knife’s edge. Beautiful orange and red leaves rustled through the forest as Wanda walked through the forest, and cold breeze cut through the air. It smelled like wildness, like magic, like rotting things and growing things and dying things, the circle of life.

Everything was dying, she thought. And everything was living.

The veil grew thinner as the moon rose.

The cemetery was on the edge of the Avengers’ compound. It was a part of the next town, officially, though the small church that had once cared for it was old and abandoned. Not another soul was within a mile as Wanda crossed the boundary between the woods and the cemetery. In one hand she held a basket full of arcane supplies; in the other, a rabbit she’d killed quickly with her magic.

She knelt in front of her brother’s grave. ‘Pietro Maximoff,’ it read. ‘Beloved brother, friend, hero.’

Wanda scoffed even as her eyes watered.

The candles she produced from her basket were black and white. The herbs she prepared, some set in front of the grave, some set alight, were dark and light. The ritual she read aloud, that brought wind swirling around her, that hung dark pink and sparkling in the air, called for her to burn one of her letters of love, and to tear a limb from the dead rabbit and set that aflame as well.

Wanda didn’t know whether this was a day for peace, or a day for destruction. What it she knew for sure was that this was the day when the lands of the dead came the closest to the lands of the living, in this part of the world. What it was, was the one day of the year when Wanda could see her brother.

He appeared beside his grave, called by her magic. Wanda’s eyes filled with tears even as he sat, cross-legged, beside her.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. His voice was no more than a sigh on the wind. “I didn’t mean to leave you.”

“Then why did you?” she sobbed.

“There was a child about to die. I couldn’t watch that.”

Wanda shook her head viciously. “You should have let him die. You should have stayed with me. We were meant to be together, always!”

Her voice bounced against the wall of the church. Two candles went out from the force of her magic.

Pietro shook his head. “What is this?” he asked, pointing at her ritual. “A rabbit? I thought you weren’t going to do the dark stuff anymore.”

“If only you knew how much of the dark stuff I do now,” she spat. Her black-painted nails dug into the ground. “There is so much darkness in the world, Pietro. I see it even more now. The wars, they are never about protection, never about what is right. They are only about money and power. I thought that when we got our powers, we could change things. But it is just… how the world it. I hate it,” she moaned.

His arms came around her. The touch was without heat or coldness, without pressure. She sensed it through her magic more than on her skin.

“I want to kill them all,” Wanda whispered. “I don’t think the nice magic will be enough.”

She tugged on the bond they had always felt between them, which only got stronger and stranger since they gained their powers. She felt Pietro, as familiar as always, and behind him, something massive and strange. Wanda could sense that if she pulled that power through her brother, then the deaths she wanted, the righteous punishment, would be within her grasp.

“Any how many will die for it?” Pietro asked. “How many children would you sacrifice? Children like we were? War is easy. You can kill. You can make people pay. But there will always be a city between you and the people you hate. There will always be apartment buildings that your bombs will fall on. There will always be a child about to die. I can’t watch you do that.”

Even dead, Pietro soaked up her tears.

“We had enough war,” he whispered to her. “I never made it to peacetime. You can. Peace is much harder. But you were always the tougher twin.”

Wanda shook her head, crying harder. She cried until the hatred was gone, and held him close with only love.

“I have to go.”

“What?” she gasped, looking up. The moon was barely risen to its full height. “We should have more time!”

He smiled sadly, only half-there. “You used death magic to bring me here as well as our love. And you’re not going to use the ritual to kill anymore.”

“I can,” she argued. “I still want to!”

“But you won’t.” Pietro bopped her on the nose the way he used to, faster than she could stop him with his ability. “Gotcha.”

“I want you to stay.”

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

“How... how do you know what that means? Natasha only taught it to me a few weeks ago.”

Her brother smiled. “You’re still alive, and magic, and we’re a part of each other. Where you go, I’m always there.”

He took her hand and held it until he faded away.

  


Wanda didn’t want to admit that he was gone. She sat in front of his grave all night. Occasionally she lit a new candle. But she didn’t try any of her other rituals, the dark ones or the light ones.

When the sun began to stretch pale fingers over the horizon, she collected her things back into her basket. She left the rabbit’s corpse in the woods, that another animal might eat it, or that it might rot and nourish the forest. The circle of life moving ever onward.

And Wanda returned to the land of the living, and she moved on, too.


End file.
